Climbing is fun, so is making climbing holds. Its also a good way to make good use of scrap wood.
Here’s one with a finger pocket.
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drilling holes
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the drill bit does most of the carving
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clean up the triangles with a chisel
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edges of the pocket are rounded with a chisel and a hole is drilled for a 3/8″ washer
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an interesting shape already
Because of its shape, there’s no material for the forstner bit to center on, so I cut a sacrificial piece to help the bit center until it cut deep enough.
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with sacrificial block
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starting to drill
We tried some unique textures, but we decided it looked kind of gross.
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yay for dremels and dremel burrs
A belt sander quickly removes the unwanted texture. The canvas is blank again.
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belt sander to the rescue!
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the fruits of our afternoon labors
On a different day, I also made a hangboard. Forgot to take any in-progress photos – sorry, but below is the final product. The pockets were made by drilling a line of holes with a forstner bit and then cutting away the rest with a chisel. I then used a 1/4″ radius router bit to round all the edges. I don’t have a router yet, so I (ab)used my drill press as a router. This mostly worked because pine is so soft.
The sloped holds on the top are 2×4′s cut on a compound miter saw and covered in some grip tape material, which is like sandpaper with adhesive on the back – like what is on skateboards. All the pieces are glued and screwed to a piece of 3/4″ plywood.
To mount it to my wall, I bolted some 2×4 rails into the studs of the house, and then screwed the hangboard to those rails.
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completed hangboard
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
